Nyatrix lets out a long sigh. “Can I re-dress your wounds while we talk? I’m not sure how long he’ll be out, and I’d rather not be interrupted by a Host Knight every other word.”
I tense, unsure how much more temptation I can withstand. But there’s no mistaking the way my flail lashes have already begun to ache and burn again, or the sense of her statement. “All right. Go on,” I say to Nyatrix, beginning to unbutton my dress. For a moment, she seems lost to the movement of my hands, but I’m sure I’m mistaken.
“I believe,” she begins, reaching forward to help pull my dress over my hips and down my legs before draping it on the stone bench, “even your own Church tells you some version of this story. I don’t wish to argue with you about the Creatrixes, or who was right or wrong. We can both agree, I think, that the First Son devoured His siblings in pursuit of His goals, yes?”
I nod, bracing myself on her arm as she helps me stand. She hands over my cane, and then we make our way to the edge of the baths. Instead of the natural-looking pool in the other ruins, this one was clearly carved by hand. It’s long and narrow witha maze of half-walls dividing the massive span of water into smaller sections. A faded and chipped mosaic sweeps across the floor, though I can’t make out the pattern. Ledges hold faded memories of candles—a scrap of wax, a cracked brass plate.
“I didn’t realize there were stairs,” I say as we reach the water’s edge. I tighten my grip on my cane and prepare myself to descend. “I’m sorry, this will take me a few moments.”
I feel Nyatrix halt beside me, all that power and muscle and bone stilling like a predator sighting a hare in the brush. “Would you permit me to carry you?” she asks, her lips moving against my ear.
A shiver trembles down my entire body, and I barely trust myself to speak. Though I have pushed it aside out of necessity, pain still eats away at me, gnawing on my joints, infesting the wounds on my back. The narrow, winding stairs that lead into the bath will be difficult to navigate. My leg throbs in expectation.
So I say yes.
“You may,” I reply, the words barely audible, though of course the wolf has little problem hearing them.
Without hesitation, Nyatrix sweeps me into her arms. I have almost gotten used to this—the sweet, spiced scent of her, the feel of her breasts pressed against me, her long fingers closed around my body.
But it is all different now, her in nothing more than scant underthings, me in a thin linen shift designed not to conceal my body but to protect my clothing from sweat. The knight is all around me, consuming me, enveloping me. I have nowhere to escape.
Not that I would, I think, even if I could.
She descends the stairs like it’s a holy rite, wading through the water. Only once she reaches a bench built into the wall does she release me, setting me down with impossible gentleness.From her breast band she pulls a small metal tin, placing it on the stone ledge above my head.
It is strange to think this is the third time the Lupa Nox has dressed my wounds. Perhaps that’s why my body falls into such familiar movements. Without thinking, I shift my weight, offering her my back, a dove’s neck in the jaws of a wolf.
“So you know your God devoured His siblings to make Himself powerful enough to war with the Creatrixes. You know that conflict ended when they cast Him from His divine body. But what you probably don’t know is that after the Holy War,” Nyatrix continues, her voice a low rumble as she begins to unbutton my shift, “there was a split. The Fatum were once all one grand court, the historians say, united in the glory of their strange and terrible power. But then the First Son, fueled by jealousy and rage, came to them and made an offer.”
I can barely pay attention to what she’s saying, my pulse pounding, my breaths too short and quick. Her fingertips brush my damp skin as she works her way down the buttons of my shift. Then, gently, Nyatrix slides the fabric away from my back. One sleeve slips off my shoulder, baring even more skin. Neither of us do anything about it.
“Eternal life,” she says. Even her voice sounds far away now, the words rote and memorized, as if her attention has been swallowed by something else entirely. “The Fatum live exceptionally long lives, but we’re not immortal. Your God, Sempiternus, offered to change that.”
Nyatrix’s breath ghosts across my skin, and I tremble again. For the briefest of moments, her fingers trace the nape of my neck. My chest heaves, the damp linen barely clinging to my breasts. I want to turn to her and stop her from telling me anything else by putting my mouth on hers.
I do not.
“Most of the Fatum rejected Him soundly, or so they say,” Nyatrix continues. Is it my imagination, or did her voice hitch, like she feels the undertow of this desire, too? “But some wanted immortality, had been researching it for many anni, testing plant and stone and animal for some revelation. Your God, they thought, was what they had been seeking.”
I can understand that—filling the void of their desires with the First Son’s offerings. It’s what I’ve done my whole life, burying that keening need for things I didn’t even understand beneath the teachings of the Catechisma. Instead of kneeling between the legs of another woman, I kneeled at the foot of Saintess Lucia’s statue and prayed for deliverance.
“Violence broke out,” Nyatrix murmurs. She reaches above me for the tin, pulling out a small cake of soap. “The Fatum split. Most stayed, but others followed the First Son into the wilds of Sylva, where He promised them a holy city and eternal life. Some of your people, mortals, followed Him, too, in the hopes of becoming worthy of the same promise.”
I am split down the middle by unbridled desire for Nyatrix and deep terror of what she’s saying. Over my shoulder, I watch her lather up her hands, rinse, and then lather again. The second time, she brings her palms to my back and begins to lightly wash the wounds. Pain sings through me, high-pitched and sharp, and I burrow deep into my body.
“In the wilds, He built this place,” Nyatrix says, her touch impossibly gentle on my skin. I shiver. “Lumendei. For a time, it thrived. People were driven by the promise of immortal life, happy to spend their days laboring and suffering if it meant they might one day know an eternal paradise.”
Unease simmers through me. I cannot help but feel the thread between these supposed first people of Lumendei and myself. We give all of ourselves to the Church with the promise of being rewarded in Caelus, saved from Inferna. For the firsttime, I allow myself to wonder what it would feel like for my death to come one day and for there to be nothing. Just darkness, just unmaking. In my last second of life, if I realized there was no Caelus after all, would I feel cheated?
“But all their worship wasn’t enough for Him,” Nyatrix continues. “Neither was the power and life of His Fatum followers—the beginnings of your High Ecclesia. He wanted the Creatrixes, too. He wanted their vast and divine bodies, the ones that had given Him life. So He went to war.”
My knees buckle, and I am grateful for the ledge carved into the rock, for the way it holds my body aloft. The scent of asphodel and the feel of her hands and this horrible thing that might be the truth surrounds me, dragging me down, down, down.
“You know this part, too,” the knight continues, rinsing my skin. “The War of the Sundering. Your people say He drove the Creatrixes from Sylva, but the truth is that they diminished themselves, seeking peace, and left these lands of their own free will. Because His appetite grew too large, the land Sundered as He stole its power in pursuit of His goals. Because they knew how catastrophic it would be if He obtained the Creatrixes’ power, if something likeHimhad the ability to create in the way the Creatrixes did.”
My stomach twists, my breath hitching. I push at Nyatrix’s words, seeking the falsehoods, straining against the bounds of the world she is describing. My mind showers me with Catechisma verses, rote and automatic, and I am almost comforted.
“Your God was furious with His armies for failing to capture the Creatrixes before they escaped,” she says with a sigh, cupping bathwater in her hands and raising it to my skin. “That’s why this city is wrecked, abandoned. He returned from the fields of war and, in a fit of godly rage, rampaged through His owncity. His own followers.That’swhy this city is ruined, Ophelia. Not because He was betrayed and hung from a cross by His own followers. But because He went to war with His own promised land. And later, with the survivors, He set out across Sylva for a new home and . . . Well, none of your people even seem to remember now. Almost like He devours memories, too.”
